Re: Ethical issues

There seems to be (at least) four different security/privacy concerns:

1. The publicly available personal information (as text), which is visible
   on the users home page.

   Today, this does not automatically show much information about the
   user, and the email address is only visible if the user has chosen to
   display it, and the viewing user is logged in.

   Is everyone alright with this?


2. The user portraits

   It would be fairly easy to make sure that these portraits are only
   visible to viewing users who are logged in. I can add this if you want
   me to.

   The user can of course choose to use an empty portrait if she likes.


3. Automatic registration

   Today, anyone who visits the site can create an account. My thoughts so
   far has been to not worry about this until someone abuses this feature,
   since there are many other things to fix.

   If you think this is a problem, we'll have to fix it in some way. My
   guess is that this is more of a social issue than a technical one,
   meaning that if we want to turn up the security, and implement some
   scheme where users are accepted by someone with authority to do so, we
   must think about who is going to have that authority, and how we
   organize the whole process.


4. The use of user data in research

   The easiest solution is perhaps to add a text somewhere which states
   that any data entered by the user is going to be used for research
   purposes.


Jesper






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